How to use objects for business processes

An object represents a category of information about your business — a contact, a deal, a company — and each object has individual records that can be associated with each other to model a real process. Prolibu ships with a fixed set of objects (Contact, Deal, Company, Product, User, Note…) that represent the typical entities of a sales process, and their records associate with each other (see Associate records).

Choose the process’s main object

Start by identifying what each row you need to manage represents. These are the objects available in the Directory module:

• Contacts for people. Their records store properties such as name, email address, phone numbers, stage, company, and website.
• Companies for organizations related to contacts or opportunities.
• Deals for a sales opportunity or transaction.
• Tickets for requests or cases that need follow-up.
• Tasks, Notes, Meetings, and Calls to log activity related to sales or service work.

A record is a specific row within one of those objects. Its properties are the fields that store its data; you can add fields to an existing object in Custom fields. Associations connect records that belong to the same process, such as a contact and their company or deal. See Associate records to create and review those links.

Before adding fields, choose the object based on the main entity, not every piece of data you want to store: use a contact for a person and add a property when you need another piece of data about that person; use a deal when you need to track a separate opportunity associated with them. This avoids using fields as substitutes for related records.

Relate the available objects

Prolibu associations are specific references, not a general relationship system between any pair of objects. For example:

• A Contact can have one Company in its Company field; choosing another replaces the current one.
• From a Contact, you can use Create deal with this contact to start a related Deal.
• When creating a Ticket, the form includes references for Contact and Deal.

Do not assume every object can relate to every other object, that a relationship will appear automatically from both records, or that it can carry labels. For Contact–Company association, creating a related deal, and its limits, follow Associate records.

Scripts can automate work on existing objects, but do not replace the ability to create a new object.